than conception. The mind does not first make concepts and then proceed to piece these concepts together to form judgments. It is probable that the two processes appeared in consciousness together and developed together.

For purposes of study, conception and judgment have been separated from each other and recognized as two separate processes, but in our conscious life they are inextricably bound together, each involving the other.

Exercises

1. Illustrate the differences between concept and percept by describing what is meant by the concept and the percept of the following: circle, lion, goodness, ratio, ocean.

2. What is your everyday concept of house, dinner, book. 3. What is your thought symbol for beauty, truth, United States, Congress, war, learning, mercy?

4. Give an instance of mistaking symbol for meaning.

5. Why is spit vulgar and saliva admissible? Why is serpent more dignified than snake?

6. Give an example of a subject that is equal in extension to its predicate.

CHAPTER VII

REASONING

Reasoning may be used broadly as a synonym of thinking, and reason and intellect have practically the same meaning. But it is convenient in psychology to use reason and reasoning in a more restricted sense. Here reasoning will be used as meaning a logically connected chain of judgments resulting in a judgment which is a conclusion.

Hence reasoning is explicit judgment, as judgment is explicit conception.

So we have

==

Concept + concept = judgment.
Judgment + judgment

=

chain of reasoning.

There are two kinds of reasoning, inductive and deductive.

INDUCTIVE REASONING

Our one source of knowledge is experience. But we should be in a sorry plight if we could not anticipate experience. A child touches a red-hot stove. Very well (or rather, very ill, from the child's standpoint), he knows something from experience. What does he know directly from experience? "That the stove must not be touched." Not at all; that is a very complex conclusion. "That he will burn his finger again, if he touches the stove again." Yes, he knows that, but

not directly from experience. In fact, he can hardly be said to know anything directly from experience; or rather, experience itself, as he knows it, is a complex series of conclusions he has arrived at more or less. logically. He knows that if he touches that stove again he will again be burnt; and he knows it as the result of a complex mental process. This process we are now to study.

The hot stove burnt me, is the first judgment, which comes as near being pure experience as is possible. Like causes have like results, is the universal postulate which we all subconsciously make. The stove seems to be in the same condition now as it was a moment ago, when I burnt myself, hence if I touch the stove again, I shall make all the conditions the same as at my former experience. This now completes the chain of reasoning, except for the conclusion: The result would be the same: I should be burnt.

In this way we anticipate experience, and profit by experience. Inductive reasoning is hence a way of getting ahead of experience, of making it unnecessary.

The rational world is an organized unity lying between the two poles, law and fact. Induction is a method for getting from the facts to the law.

Complete Induction. If every instance, or fact, under a certain class, or law, is examined, we can arrive at a truth that is as certain as experience itself. Thus we may say that for half a century there has been no frost in Iowa in July.

But complete induction is seldom possible and sometimes not desirable. For example, farmers in Minnesota will plant corn about the middle of May, a long

series of inductions having told them that it is generally safe from frost at that time. They cannot in the nature of the case wait until all Mays are gone before they assert that the middle of May is safe, and plant their corn.

The story is told of a gentleman whose man brought home a box of poor matches. "Next time you buy matches, test them," said he to his "man." The next box of matches proved even a worse disappointment. Not one of them would light. didn't you test them?" the servant was asked. but I did," responded he; "I tested every last match in the box." He had made a complete induction.

"Why "Oh,

So practically we must be satisfied with a limited number of inductive examples. In this way, to be sure, we never reach absolute certainty, but we get what is just as useful, pragmatic certainty. We always try to apply to the problem the axiom, "Like causes produce like effects," which removes the problem from the sphere of induction, and makes it deductive. But generally the problem cannot be made to come under the law of like causes fully, since it is hardly possible to become absolutely certain that the causal situations are absolutely alike. Sometimes we come pretty near it, though.

A chemist mixes certain chemicals. He knows the chemicals by certain characteristics. He confidently predicts the result because he has mixed the identical kinds of chemicals in the identical way before, and he is sure of the uniformity of Nature: that she will respond to-day exactly as she did yesterday to the same experimental question.

Knowledge based on Authority.-Much of our knowledge is based on authority. A small percentage of what we know is based on our own experience or reasoning. We have been told so, hence we know. Thus my "knowledge" of Africa is wholly based on faith in human authority. All I know of what happened before I was born and most of what I know of what has happened after I was born I know on human authority. Most of what we know, we know on what lawyers call hearsay evidence."

Our belief in authority is based ultimately on an induction. We notice that the vastly greater number of assertions which we have had a chance to test, made by accepted texts and encyclopedias, have turned out to be true; hence we infer that such authority may be trusted in this case. But the case is usually more complex. The fact that other people with more experience than ourselves recognize certain authority, makes us accept it. Thus the average scholar takes the statements in his textbooks entirely on authority.

Knowledge based on Faith. - Only through experience do we gain knowledge; but there is some knowledge which we did not gain directly from experience. Thus I know that the whole of anything is equal to all its parts, that the same object cannot be in two places at the same time, that it is impossible to conceive space as limited, and all other axioms, to be true without depending on experience. Of course I could not have these ideas or any other ideas, if I had not had experience. But as soon as I begin to perceive and think, I know that these self-evident truths are true, without any testimony from experience.